Abstract

The variable order wave equation plays a major role in acoustics, electromagnetics, and fluid dynamics. In this paper, we consider the space–time variable order fractional wave equation with variable coefficients. We propose an effective numerical method for solving the aforementioned problem in a bounded domain. The shifted Jacobi polynomials are used as basis functions, and the variable-order fractional derivative

is described in the Caputo sense. The proposed method is a combination of shifted Jacobi–Gauss–Lobatto collocation scheme for the spatial discretization and the shifted Jacobi–Gauss–Radau collocation scheme for temporal discretization. The aforementioned problem is then reduced to a problem consists of a system of easily solvable algebraic equations. Finally, numerical examples are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed numerical method.